It is often assumed that the simple presence of international students and ubiquitous use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) are the main agents of internationalisation of higher education (HE), whereby English equals international education and inbound student mobility equals increased internationalisation. While there are perceived…

Many people involved in international education, including students and parents, engage in a stepping-stone discourse that identifies English-medium learning in non-Western countries as a preparatory stage for postsecondary education in Western destinations, with the ultimate goal to secure competitive employment. The present study examines how…

This study utilises comparative case studies of three Japanese third-culture kids (TCKs) living in Singapore aged 16, each from a different school type (international school, Japanese school, and local Singapore school). It explores if the home language, language used in school, language used in social circles, and language of media consumed of…

In Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, higher education internationalisation agendas have increasingly shifted from studying abroad to offering 'international' English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at home. This qualitative study explores the perceptions of seventeen domestic undergraduate students in the disciplines of Law and…

Internationalization in higher education in Japan is progressing, and it is desirable for international students to have a high degree of satisfaction with their experience in Japanese universities. With that in mind, this research focuses on the study of Japanese language and experiences of taking Japanese language classes before and during study…

The present study investigates the effects of two subsequent learning contexts, formal instruction (FI) at home and a 3-month stay abroad (SA), on vocabulary acquisition in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing and speaking. Data were collected from 30 Catalan/Spanish learners of English before and after each learning period using a written…

The discussion takes up the common theme across the seven contributions of this special issue, namely the CEFR's suitability as a basis for setting university entrance standards. The special issue allows insights into this theme from a multitude of contexts, languages and perspectives, including data from stakeholders, students, tests and their…

While there is ample evidence that study abroad (SA) enhances oral fluency in a foreign language, the effects of different types of learning context on other aspects of oral skills, such as vocabulary use, have not received much attention in academic research and are less clear. The present study tries to fill this void by investigating lexical…

The received wisdom is that mobility programmes considerably contribute to students in terms of the development of generic skills, language and multicultural competence and competitive advantage in the global labour market. Surprisingly, the impacts of mobility programmes on academic learning have received very limited research interest in the…

Host and international students evolve side-by side within the expanding internationalization of higher education. This study takes the complementary perspective of analysing 1,900 host and international students' experiences at a high-ranking research university in France. We analyse and compare the mobility, language practices and practices…

Recent studies have shown that the number of international students, who are academically mobile, is growing. As a result, higher education institutions aim at competitiveness in the world market. Therefore, the core issue of the following work is a process of adaptation of international students to a new educational environment, especially to the…

Internationalisation of higher education greatly facilitates cross-border student mobility, which has been extensively researched. This comparative study focuses on the relatively under-explored field of intra-regional educational mobility. It compares attitudes towards learning and using English of Mainland Chinese students and Hong Kong Chinese…

The primary purpose of this study lies in the evaluation of what students acquire from studies abroad in the context of credit mobility, in terms of competence development and personal growth, compared with that gained by students completing their study or internship in their home country. A pre-post test design, with both an experimental group…

The key role of administrative staff in the implementation of specific institutional policies at university has often been ignored when analysing policies or attitudes related to higher education. Consequently, little is known about the administrative staff's attitudes and involvement relating to the processes of internationalisation and…

This article presents the results from a mainly statistical and comparative analysis regarding the communicative competences and the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) of German exchange students. The data was extracted from two exhaustive, rigorous and methodical questionnaires related to communicative and ICT competences,…